Mexican Live Coding Essay

Live coding offers a unique mixture of the Hacker and the DIY ethics, academic intellectuality, popular and traditional music and visual expressions that made it irresistible for a young community of artists and programmers in Mexico City. Composer Sergio Luque introduced Super Collider through workshops in governmental institutions in Mexico City and continued private lessons from Europe via Skype and E-Mail during the first half of the 2000 decade. The artists he taught were mostly composers and musicians with academic training and interest in live electronics, computers, and improvisation. Luckily, many of these artists were related to the National Centre for the Arts (CNA for the Spanish name: Centro Nacional de las Artes), an institution of the Mexican Government devoted to bring high quality artistic

It was the first time that the Mexican live coding community was exposed to the creators of the practice and to the pioneers of the European community. The exchange was fruitful and opened the horizons of the Mexican live coders. One of the main changes this experience brought about, was realization of the possibility to use pre-written code and to extend the duration of the performances. The initial 9 minute from scratch way, that jokingly was called the Mexican style, and that included a nice drink of Mezcal during the performance, was very important as a way to master the softwares and to learn to think for solutions to create a performance. Thanks to the days the Mexican and European live coders spent together during /*vivo*/, the most important lesson learned was not that the duration and the structures are meant to be free, but that the definition of live coding is ever changing, ever expanding and we all are responsible of it. There are no rules written in stone, except may be a good Mezcal